New Capital Raising Rules Proposed By OSC

On March 20, 2014, the Ontario Securities Commission (the "OSC") published for comment four new capital raising exemptions that have been under consideration since June 2012. The proposed exemptions, which Davies reported on in our 2014 Canadian Capital Markets Report, are:

• An offering memorandum exemption;
• A crowdfunding exemption;
• A friends and family exemption; and
• An existing security holder exemption.

Except for the crowdfunding exemption, the proposed exemptions are already available, with some variations, in several other Canadian jurisdictions. The proposed crowdfunding exemption was also published for comment in the provinces of Québec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. The British Columbia Securities Commission published a separate crowdfunding proposal with more limited funding levels.